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Sunday, March 2, 2014

Blue Screen of Death error in Windows 7 system and the solution

Couple of months back I started having a peculiar problem in my Windows 7 PC which restarted on its own once every few days while any important work was in progress. One reason for restart could be power outage, but that was out of question as I had connected my PC to APC UPS back-up system few weeks ago before the problem started. It provides battery back-up of at least 2 hours and prevents the PC from getting restarted during outage. I sensed something was wrong internally. It could be a hardware or software issue. Once the computer restarted, I got a pop-up window giving me details of unexpected shutdown of the system. It read like this:

I noted down the above error message and searched the possible solution. Be it a problem with a computer or a personal life, I always love to google to find the solution most suitable for me. Therefore, just like millions of others, I googled with keywords "Windows 7 PC restarts on its own" and then giggled on finding one forum that suggested a solution. It asked me to go to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab. Under the Startup and Recovery option, I chose Settings and unchecked "Automatically restart" option. I also changed the Write debugging information to Small memory dump (128 KB) as shown in the diagram below:

The solution worked for a while and PC did not restart after unchecking the above option. However, my relief was temporary when PC started throwing BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) screen instead of restarting. BSOD is a nightmare for people daydreaming about happy and hassle-free computing; the most dreaded screen any PC user would hate to see!

To my good luck, the screen stayed for a while giving me the opportunity to capture the shot in my smartphone. Without wasting time, I rang up my computer vendor, described the problem and asked to send him the error snapshot via WhatsApp. He checked the message and called back soon saying it was a problem with RAM, which needed to be removed from the motherboard slot and refitted to its original position. I followed the instruction and ever since then the problem has not haunted my PC again.